Honam Petrochemical shuts 1m tonne/year Daesan naphtha cracker

04 May 2012 04:43[Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--?xml:namespace>South Korea’s Honam Petrochemical shut its 1m tonne/year naphtha cracker in Daesan on Friday because of mechanical problems at the plant's cooling unit, a company source said.

The cracker will be restarted on 11 May, the source said.

Prior to the shutdown, Honam had been running the cracker at 90% of capacity since late March due to the mechanical problems, the source said.

The company will be out of the spot light naphtha market for a full week because of the shutdown.

Honam Petrochemical's outage is expected to exert more downward pressure on naphtha prices, which have been plummeting throughout the week on surplus supply, several traders said.

Open spec naphtha prices plunged $14.50-16.50/tonne (€11.02-12.54/tonne) on Friday morning to be assessed at $976.50-979.50/tonne CFR (cost and freight) Japan.